Chapter Text
She sits at home, blankly staring at a wall, her eyes dull and blank. Her breathing so quiet and shaky, you could mistake it for the wind blowing through the trees. The girl doesn't move, doesn't move out of the chair in the middle of the large, empty house. She doesn't answer the phone that rings every once and a while, nor does she look at the few letters that have come over the week. The girls, dark hair is matted and hangs down her back like a mass of spindly twigs. Her skin was pale and her face was gaunt, her eyes had bags under them from all those sleepless nights. Flowers grow on the graveyard in the forest, Primroses that Effie planted. They where meant to help her, but they where just a cruel reminder. A bow hung, gathering dust in the hallway like a present you received years ago that you keep for someone, but never use it.
Ominous shadows taunt her, asking her why is it she is still living, still breathing, when so many better people have been killed due to your ignorance or your own hand and walk in the land of the dead. The girl doesn't know the answer, she doesn't have one. Like when she was asked by a man, holding a gun to her chest why he shouldn't just kill her now. He wanted a reason. The girl couldn't give one. The man didn't shoot, the girl wishes he had. Just a small movement, pulling the trigger of the gun, saving people from so much suffering. Her desolate house at victors village cackles with memories from the capital, the village was ther only thing standing. She got the rest of her home destroyed, so many innocent people dead. Almost a whole district full, dead because of her actions. Then she went and started a war. The rebellion killed good people, innocent, good.
She was a fire, a bright one, a dangerous one, she burned those near her like a wildfire spreading through the forest. There where sparks, matches, small tongues of flame, not big enough to harm anyone, She was a wildfire, destroying everything. She was deadly.
Now she was burnt out.
Well. Katniss thought to herself grimly. A fire that burns bright isn't meant to last.
And with good reason.
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He sits on the beach, chin rested on his knees. Staring at the sea, but not seeing it. He doesn't know the time, nor the day, nor the date. He trys to call Katniss every once and a while, when he moves. Which isn't much, but he does, occasionally. The sea is gentle and the sun is bright and happy, distantly, he can hear children laughing and playing on the beach. Everything around him is radiant with happiness and peace, such a conflict to his own raging tornado in his mind. His hair used to be sleek and well kept, his eyes used to be fun and cheeky. His hair is tangled and dry and his eyes are sad and haunted. Perfect, round pebbles and beautiful shells wash up on the beach, forcefully reminding him of when he used to make shell necklaces and draw patterns into rocks with Mags. When they where calm and happy.
The boy flinches away from the scuttling crabs and the noisy birds, squawking words at him, why are you here, why are you alive, look what you've done! Look at how you've lied. He flinches because its true, he knows that, but he doesn't want to hear it, he seeks reassurance in the sea, but it greets him with salty letters squashed together. He hides his head in his knees, he doesn't want to see, doesn't want to know anything. He wants to forget, but he doesn't, he's to weak to forget. The boy feels grief and guilt more than anything else, because sad emotions, guilt, fear and grief, conquer happy emotions, joy, glee and delight. Its strange really, some people say that positivity is easier to feel than negativity, but that's not true, not for him anyway. Theres not always a glint of light, not always a star in the sky, but there's always a monster under the bed feeding of sadness.
Once, the boy was a cheeky, flirty boy who played in the sea and made necklaces in the sun, lying on the beach, managing to forget all that had happened. Once, he was a young boy who danced on the beach, then the games came and he turned deadly, no longer the young, carefree boy who laughed and giggled, but a scared man haunted from his life.
I suppose. Finnick thought grudgingly. The sea's a vast place, and when your on it, your always lost and alone.
Always lost and alone.
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The girl wasn't like the other survivors, her strongest emotion wasn't guilt or grief. Hers was anger. She paced furiously her immense house, her blazing eyes fixed on the floor as her enraged footsteps echoed throughout the house. Her breathing wasn't shaky or sad, it was fast and short. Her axe was implanted on a wall as she threw it at it, trying to vent her anger on the wall. Other knives where thrown with deadly accuracy around it. She was always angry, but this was different, a filler really, she couldn't stand being sad, being angry was so much easier. However, there where no snide remarks or discreet insults, there was no playful banter and no heated discussions. This wasn't the girls real anger, she was different from the other survivors, they where all different, but she was broken to. Not many noticed under her mask of rage, but she was hurting to. She dealt with it differently, some would talk about it like Beete, some would mutter to themselves viciously like Enboria, some would resort to another land far away in their head like Annie, some would drown themselves in drink like Haymitch, some would sit quietly talking to a sibling occasionally like Finnick and some would keep to themselves like Katniss. But she would vent her anger with weapons on walls and trees.
Eventually, the girl would collapse, defeated into a chair, sinking into its clawing embrace. Her knives and daggers would jeer at her, sneering remarks at her, why are you here, but your family isn't? Why are you here yet so many others died before you? Why didn't you go help at the capital? Help save them, you could've saved them, but you stayed like a coward. She would put her head in her hands and block out the sneering weapons, she wrote to Finnick, Annie and Katniss occasionally, but they never replied. As far as she knew, there where still letters, unread on the matt in front of the door. However, she couldn't bring herself to read them.
The girl sighed. Every night I imagine someone holding me till I fall asleep. Johanna thought, And every night I believe it to ever happen less
Because they're all dead.
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The man sits in his house at victors village, an empty feeling inside of him. His grey eyes aren't focused and his pale, claw like hand clasps a half empty bottle. His thoughts aren't real, nothing he feels is real anymore, he doesn't understand it, he doesn't want to. On the rare occasion, he remembers something from another life, when he was young and played with the other kids from the seam. He wasn't anything anymore, just an old drunk man, the oldest living victor from district 12. The only male victor alive. He can vaguely hear the whipping wind twisting through the piles of bottles laying on the cold floor. They remind the man of dead corpses, but he can't work up the energy to move them.
Once apon a time, he never needed to block out these painful, useless emotions like mourning and guilt, Those days where gone, gone where the days when he would smile at the world, now where his dark days where he cursed life at every turn, wondering what good would result of his life. A week of entertainment for the capital and a moments solitude for a pair of young victors. That was it. He drowned himself in the blissful isolation of alcohol every day, he cut himself of from the world. He screamed in his sleep and thrashed around with the knife constantly grasped in his hand due to paranoia. He wasn't the only victor taunted by inanimate objects as all the victors and survivors slowly drifted away from the world. His empty bottles asked him things he couldn't answer. Why he was alive, when he was old and scarred. Why did young people, who had so much to live for die but he lived on? What is the reason that him, who hated life and people, was alive when young children who had a chance died in his place?
He stared unseeingly at his bottle. I just want to forget. Haymitch thought. to forget everything, as if I never existed, never lived. That would be better.
That it would.
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The girl wasn't there, not really, she was physically in the daunting house at the corner of victors village, but not mentally. The bed she lay on was untouched and the pictures and shells and books on the shelves where coated with a layer of dust. She didn't move, like a corpse laying in a coffin, awaiting a low spirited funeral in her honour. Although the girl wasn't dead, she wasn't alive either. She occasionally spoke with her brother when he called her gently out of the world she was manifesting in her head, but otherwise she was dead to the world, even if her heart was still beating steadily. Inside her head was a beautiful world, the people weren't scarred like she and her friends, but happy and free. It was different, but to her it was perfect. The girl was afraid of the real world therefore found a safe and protected heaven to resort to when the pain that consumed her was unbearable.
The majority of the time, the girl lived in her head and it was almost impossible to call her back for she was reluctant to again the feel the overwhelming feelings that broke her like a person walking on paper thin ice. She could hear the gentle waves in her head, crashing down on the soft sand, she was playing on it, with her mother, father, friends and brother, kicking the salty water up at them and having contests. Who could skim a stone the furthest? Who could make the biggest sandcastle? Who could climb the highest cliff? Who could run the furthest in the sand? Who could swim the quickest? It was all fun and games, a real game, not a game that was fatal if you loose, embarrassing at the worst, but never fatal, they where purely fun for the people playing the game, because those are the best games to play. The game was over, she drifted away from her paradise of memories, her eyes glistening with tears.
Sometimes its better to be alone. Thought Annie. So no one can hurt you, but that's in your head.
That's not real